marathag
Banned
Like a Zeppelin shed, most of the targets won't be moving around much in harbor. What hits there are will be deadly, since ships will have few watertight doors set
1920s Sea Change
- Thread starter Carl Schwamberger
- Start date
thaddeus
Donor
both planned on using submarines (albeit for different purposes) and seaplanes would have really increased their lethality.
McPherson
Banned
What part of a 1 tonne torpedo dropped in a SHALLOW anchorage by a biplane that stands a 25% mechanical own goal fail rate and proven 82% no return 100% mission kill loss rate did one miss? And I presume the HSF has heard of torpedo nets and AAA guns?
The RM was caught flat footed at Taranto, by a much better trained, more competent RN. Comte de Cavour was a write-off but the other damage was made good in 7 months. (Faster than Pearl Harbor, which still had not 100% ed by wars end.)
If I am Hipper I have fighter patrols ready off the Jade, and AAA at Butjadingen. Nets and booms are green.
Still showing prevailing westerlies instead of a mysterious circular vortex of RN doom. Maybe tomorrow...
So the carriers would therefore be sailing east due to the need for landing/taking off with a strong tailwind, or something? Or perhaps just scuttling themselves due to predestined failure and a need to meet the weekly quota of dead matelots? LOL
I was puzzled by the thread inexplicably heading into bizarro-land so I hit the “Show ignored content” button and found pretty much exactly what I expected.
Info on the RN's planned carrier raid on the HSF
The Royal Navy’s Air Service in the Great War: David Hobbs
The proposed 1917 raid would have used eight converted ships carrying 121 aircraft, 120 with torpedoes and 1 brightly coloured aircraft to act as raid commander which would stay in the area to co-ordinate the three waves and the H-12 flying boats flying from Felixstowe that would attack at the same time with 230lb bombs directed against floating docks, dockyard engine houses, magazine and submarines moored alongside each other in the basin.
Five aircraft flights from each of the eight ships would make up each wave of 40. As soon as the first flight of five had taken off, the second and third flights would be ranged and launched. Five was a good number to handle into position and launch quickly from a deck; there was at the time no experience of launching larger numbers in sequence. Furthermore, engines tended to overheat if kept running on deck so they were just started prior to take off; again five seemed to be a practical number to start and get airborne in a single batch. It was also deemed the minimum necessary to cripple a single capital ship at anchor.
The 8 ships would have a flight deck above the superstructure with no hanger.
Each ship would carry up to 17 Cuckoos and 2 Camel fighters.
Cover story was that the ships were destined for the Persian Gulf, Egyptian waters or the Red Sea and additional features were to be added to make this look the case such as fans, ventilation etc
The flying boats would refuel from destroyers on the way back.
Cruisers and destroyers would provide the close escort while mines would be laid in the theoretical way of German light forces from Emden and the Grand Fleet would provide distant cover.
The proposed 1918 raid would have used Furious, Vindictive and Argus,
On 6th September 1919 a demonstration raid was carried out on Portland with eleven aircraft in two groups, one with five torpedo aircraft with torpedoes with inert warheads and two aircraft with smoke bombs and the other with three aircraft with torpedoes with inert warheads and one aircraft with smoke bombs. The first group scored one hit each on Barham and Malaya, two on Implacable with the fifth torpedo diving into the seabed. The second group scored two hits on Queen Elizabeth, the last seems to have been a mistake as the crews claimed they thought they thought they were attacking Barham, with one torpedo diving into the seabed.
The Royal Navy’s Air Service in the Great War: David Hobbs
The proposed 1917 raid would have used eight converted ships carrying 121 aircraft, 120 with torpedoes and 1 brightly coloured aircraft to act as raid commander which would stay in the area to co-ordinate the three waves and the H-12 flying boats flying from Felixstowe that would attack at the same time with 230lb bombs directed against floating docks, dockyard engine houses, magazine and submarines moored alongside each other in the basin.
Five aircraft flights from each of the eight ships would make up each wave of 40. As soon as the first flight of five had taken off, the second and third flights would be ranged and launched. Five was a good number to handle into position and launch quickly from a deck; there was at the time no experience of launching larger numbers in sequence. Furthermore, engines tended to overheat if kept running on deck so they were just started prior to take off; again five seemed to be a practical number to start and get airborne in a single batch. It was also deemed the minimum necessary to cripple a single capital ship at anchor.
The 8 ships would have a flight deck above the superstructure with no hanger.
Each ship would carry up to 17 Cuckoos and 2 Camel fighters.
Cover story was that the ships were destined for the Persian Gulf, Egyptian waters or the Red Sea and additional features were to be added to make this look the case such as fans, ventilation etc
The flying boats would refuel from destroyers on the way back.
Cruisers and destroyers would provide the close escort while mines would be laid in the theoretical way of German light forces from Emden and the Grand Fleet would provide distant cover.
The proposed 1918 raid would have used Furious, Vindictive and Argus,
On 6th September 1919 a demonstration raid was carried out on Portland with eleven aircraft in two groups, one with five torpedo aircraft with torpedoes with inert warheads and two aircraft with smoke bombs and the other with three aircraft with torpedoes with inert warheads and one aircraft with smoke bombs. The first group scored one hit each on Barham and Malaya, two on Implacable with the fifth torpedo diving into the seabed. The second group scored two hits on Queen Elizabeth, the last seems to have been a mistake as the crews claimed they thought they thought they were attacking Barham, with one torpedo diving into the seabed.
Going back to the original post. I can see the US being a candidate, by building all the Constellations as aircraft carriers. The USN has dropped battlecruiser construction; there was some unhappiness with the design. They may still build battleships, at least finish Washington and the first couple of South Dakotas. And then what for the USA, and other countries?
I hear you go well with fava beans and a nice Chianti.
I really don't if six Lexingtons is a good idea. Obviously fill them with aircraft and make it rain, but it is pretty big statement of intent and potentially a big obsolescence issue. Three or four Lexingtons allows for some funds for experiments with smaller carriers and you can beg some Yorktowns out of Congress in the 30s when you know what you want in a carrier.
International responses are harder to pick. Obviously everyone would want to know why the US is going so heavily into big carriers. But even if they showed interest who has the money to play between the wars? You could end up with the hilarious situation with allowable carrier tonnage based around 6 Lexingtons and no one building up to it.
I have to say it is an unusual twist on WNT.
I really don't if six Lexingtons is a good idea. Obviously fill them with aircraft and make it rain, but it is pretty big statement of intent and potentially a big obsolescence issue. Three or four Lexingtons allows for some funds for experiments with smaller carriers and you can beg some Yorktowns out of Congress in the 30s when you know what you want in a carrier.
International responses are harder to pick. Obviously everyone would want to know why the US is going so heavily into big carriers. But even if they showed interest who has the money to play between the wars? You could end up with the hilarious situation with allowable carrier tonnage based around 6 Lexingtons and no one building up to it.
I have to say it is an unusual twist on WNT.
SsgtC
Banned
For the time period, I actually think they were an excellent design. They were an overmatch for anything afloat. The only ships that come even close to them are the Colorado class and the Queen Elizabeth class. And the QEs are only in close in terms of speed (on paper, they had a two knot advantage, in practice they were limited to about 23 knots, the same as the SoDaks).
That would be a fun TL to read. Lol. Six Lexington class carriers. Combined, they could probably put more aircraft into the air than every other carrier in the world combined. Lol
McPherson
Banned
I also give you indigestion.
The IJN found the money. Langley gives you the experimental ship. Lexingtons give you big hulls and a serial progression whereby the time you reach Ranger, you don't have the barbette problem and you have a better grasp on funnels trunking so you can do this.
Look at the silly Americans! (guffaw)
It is an option. Moffett had money for flattops or airships. He picked both. He goofed. But given his experience and the times, he had to cover both bets.
McPherson
Banned
I hate the funnel trunk scheme (Cough, cough, we can't see where we're going!) the double stacked casemate secondaries in the unarmored superstructure (Shoot me here, and blow me up, Please!), and the hull form which is one of the worst the USN shipwrights ever designed and put into the water. (I'm a real drag, man, and I turn like hippo on roller skates on ice.)
The WNT messes up the assessment of anything after 1920. We are all used to the idea of 16" and 45,000 tons being the end all and be all.
The SoDaks are impressive. 12 x 16" will always be impressive. But they are not what they could have been and what people expected of a battleship was shifting rapidly underneath them.
I find it hard to believe anyone would think that American are idiots. Not 200,000 tons of carrier idiots. Publicly plan to build that much tonnage of dynamite ships and people would want to know why and have some of their own.
Without going to check how far anything was along or even laid down... at which point does a conversion become a new build? That is probably the big issue I see with serial progression. Assuming of course a WNT type environment.
McPherson
Banned
There is a practical physical limit to what armored hulls can do. It is about 90,000 tonnes or the size of a Nimitz.
That is a function of power plants and practical hogging size limits. (See above.)
Can you seriously look at the Lexingtons as battlecruisers, as a foreign shipwright, and not ROTFLYAO? C and R were smoking hemp.
Meet USS Puritan. To fool the US Congress, the ship was rebuilt on the old USS Puritan. Yup, I think it was the ship's bell that allowed her to be legally a "rebuild".
SsgtC
Banned
Ok, I'll grant you the secondaries. Those were just plain stupid and would likely have been platted over within a few years of commissioning and replaced with 5"/51s on deck. The rest, well, ship design was changing rapidly. For the time they were designed and laid down, they were good ships and would have quite literally ruled the waves until someone launches an 18" gunned behemoth.
True. They were not what they could have been. And that I lay squarely on Josephus Daniels, Wilson's Secretary of Navy. The man singlehandedly set back American battleship design by 10 years because of his paralyzing fear of innovation. The Navy wanted to go to 16"/45 guns with the New Mexico class of 1915. But Daniels personally prohibited it. Had he not screwed American battleship design, the SoDaks would have vastly different and vastly improved. In a TL that I was working on, I've got the Colorado class being the first true Fast Battleships with a top speed of 27 knots and 9x16"/50 and the SoDaks going to 12x16"/50 with the same 27 knot speed.
Again, I'm curious how widely known this test became in the 1920s? Also it sounds like there were no torpedo nets.
I think it was fortunate for the world that the Germans and Italians didn't develop effective aerial torpedoes by 1939.
I think the Royal Navy would have suffered heavily off Norway, Dunkirk and in the Mediterranean in 1940 had the Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica possessed medium bombers armed with effective torpedoes in reasonable numbers.
They would also have been better off converting most of their maritime patrol squadrons from seaplanes and flying boats to landplanes when monoplanes with retractable undercarriages became available.
The Luftwaffes tiny experimental group did well with He 111. Had their bombing techniques been commonly adopted torpedoes would have been irrelevant. It also appears the dive bombing techniques were not appropriate for attacking ships. Correct techniques adopted from 1934 or even 1938 would have been helpful. But, I agree, amphibians were not necessary for air domination of the North Sea and Baltic. If the KM had been allowed a decent size air wing twin engined bombers like the He 111 or the Ju88 would have been just fine. With a KM air wing we might also have seen a VLR aircraft in production as a vehicle for observation of the seas west of the UK. The Western and Northern Approaches as the Brits called them. Also naval air reconissance of the western approaches to France would have been very useful.